Abstract:

The experiment was designed to exhibit the components that establish the latent
heat of fusion for water. A calorimeter was used to find the latent heat of fusion.
The energy needed will come from cup of water. The amount of water and its
temperature will be measured before adding some ice, and then again after the ice
has been melted. To determine our fusion value, final magnitudes was calculated.
Our resulting values of 66.1 cal/g, 58.3 cal/g, and 55.0 cal/g; when compared with
the true latent heat of fusion of water a value of 80 cal/g, attains the percent
discrepancies of 17.4%, 27.1%, and31.3% respectively. For the overall lab, our
experimental value resulted in 59.8 cal/g +20.2 Energy is required to change water
from a solid to a liquid, i.e. to melt ice.

Introduction:

Latent heat fusion is the energy required to change a gram of a substance from the
solid to the liquid state without changing its temperature is commonly called it's
"heat of fusion". This energy breaks down the solid bonds, but leaves a significant
amount of energy associated with the intermolecular forces of the liquid state. As we
know to increase the temperature of water it takes heat energy and this is given by the formula Q =
mCT. Meaning that the temperature increase is directly proportional to the heat put into the system;
however, this is not the case during a phase change (i.e. melting, freezing, boiling, etc.). During a phase
change the temperature of the substance remains constant. This is due to the fact that the energy being
put into the system is being used to break the intermolecular forces between the molecules allowing them
to separate causing the phase change. This means that we can no longer use the formula Q = mCT to
determine the amount of heat put into the system since there is no temperature change during the phase
change meaning this formula would produce an answer of zero which is incorrect. Therefore we
introduce the concept of Latent Heat for phase changes. The objective of this experiment were to
understand the concept of latent heat fusion and to properly compute for the fusion value of water
respectively.

Retrieved March 14, 2017, from http://hyperphysics.phy-

astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/phase2.html

Retrieved March 14, 2017, from

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